Thomas Alexander was born on December 28, 1823 at Fort Loudon, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, United States, the seventh in a family of eleven children. His father, Thomas Scott, kept a tavern at which the passengers on the stagecoaches stopped for refreshments. His mother, Thomas Scott's second wife, was Rebecca Douglas.
The boy attended a country school in the winter months.
At the age of ten Thomas Alexander Scott lost his father, and then he worked as a handy man in a general supply store until he was about seventeen, when he went to Columbia, Pennsylvania, as a clerk in the office of Maj. James Patton, his brother-in-law, who was collector of tolls on the state system of public roads and canals. He remained in the employ of the state until 1845, then engaged in private business ventures at Columbia, with an interval in 1847-49 when he was chief clerk in the office of the collector of tolls at Philadelphia.
In 1850 he became station agent for the railroad at Duncansville, the point of transfer between the Pennsylvania Railroad and the state canals on the one hand and the Allegheny Portage Railroad over the mountains on the other. In December 1852, when the Pennsylvania Railroad was completed to Pittsburgh, his abilities had so far developed that he was appointed third assistant superintendent in charge of the division starting westward from Altoona, with his office at Pittsburgh.
On January 1, 1858, he became general superintendent, and on March 21, 1860, first vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In this capacity, as the war clouds thickened early in 1861, Scott advised the President-Elect, who was in Harrisburg as the guest of Governor Curtin, not to go directly to Washington as he had intended, but to return secretly to Philadelphia and proceed thence, with the same secrecy, to the Capital. This plan was adopted, the telegraph wires were disconnected, and Lincoln reached Washington ahead of the time published in the newspapers and by another route.
Upon the outbreak of hostilities, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, then secretary of war, summoned Scott to Washington (April 21, 1861) to operate the Northern Central railroad from Harrisburg to Baltimore for the purpose of transporting men and munitions. Taking with him from the Pennsylvania Railroad service a young telegraph operator named Andrew Carnegie, Scott reported to Cameron.
On May 3, 1861, he was commissioned colonel of United States Volunteers; and by an act of Congress of August 3, 1861, he was appointed assistant secretary of war to supervise all government railways and transportation lines. Although he had only advisory power, in the months before his resignation, June 1, 1862, he laid the foundation of a working system.
In September 1863 he was called back into the government service and given the temporary appointment of colonel and assistant quartermaster-general on the staff of Major-General Joseph Hooker for the special task of transporting some 13, 000 men, with their artillery, wagons, and horses, from Virginia through Nashville to Chattanooga. From time to time throughout the war, Scott was called upon for advice and suggestions regarding the government's use of railroads.
Meanwhile, under the presidency of J. Edgar Thomson, with Scott as vice-president, the Pennsylvania Railroad was beginning its period of greatest expansion. In 1862 the company leased the Philadelphia & Erie, which provided a connection between the Atlantic seaboard and the Great Lakes; in 1868-69 control was secured, through lease or stock ownership, of the newly built lines reaching consecutively from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Chicago; while in 1871 the United Canal and Railroad Companies of New Jersey were leased, extending the line from Philadelphia into New York City. Other leases and purchases opened the railroad's entrance into Baltimore and Washington.
The Pennsylvania Company was organized in 1870, with Scott as president, for the purpose of operating and managing all the lines leased and controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad west of Pittsburgh. In 1871 Scott was instrumental in having the Pennsylvania take a financial interest in the Southern Railway Security Company, which controlled a number of railroad systems built or being constructed south of Richmond, Virginia.
On March 8, 1871, he was elected president of that company, succeeding Oliver Ames, 1807-1877, but retained office only until March 6, 1872, eventually selling his holdings to Jay Gould. On June 3, 1874, upon the death of Thomson, Scott succeeded him as president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. From 1872 to 1880 he was also president of the Texas & Pacific Railway Company.
In 1878 Scott suffered a paralytic stroke, but recovered sufficiently to continue his executive work until June 1, 1880, when he resigned the presidency of the Pennsylvania. He died at his home, "Woodburn, " near Darby, Pennsylvania, less than a year later.
Thomas Alexander Scott was the fourth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, president of the Texas & Pacific Railway Company, he chiefly consolidated and strengthen the railroad system. Being the U. S. Assistant Secretary of War during the American Civil War, he played a major role in using railroads in the war effort, made the movement of supplies and troops more efficient and effective. He had a role in negotiating the Republican Party's Compromise of 1877 with the Democratic Party. Scott was often referred to as one of the first robber barons of the Gilded Age.
Scott was a man of striking appearance. He had a keen and quick apprehension, an even temper, inexhaustible patience, and great charm of manner. In spite of his limited schooling he had acquired the habit of wide reading which gave his speech the mark of an educated man.
Thomas Alexander Scott was married in the fall of 1847 to Anna Margaret Mullison, daughter of Reuben Mullison, of Columbia, Pennsylvania. She died in 1855, leaving a son and a daughter, a second daughter having died in infancy. Ten years later Scott married Anna Dike Riddle, of Pittsburgh. A daughter and two sons, one of whom died in boyhood, were born of this marriage.
